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NCAA News Archive - 2007
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Delegates use various educational sessions to gain better understanding of top issues
The NCAA News
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The NCAA News
As has become tradition at the NCAA Convention, participants had a bevy of educational sessions from which to choose when they weren’t attending governance meetings or business sessions.
Among the more intriguing sessions were two January 5 during which panelists discussing cultural issues in intercollegiate athletics said gang influences are harming young men by the thousands, and intercollegiate athletes are not immune from the danger.
The solution for college athletics, the panelists said, is likely a complicated one that involves more educational demands of young people, a willingness to provide well-reasoned second chances and a commitment to more professional opportunities for people of color.
In a panel about the influences of college sports, racial diversity, media, art and urban life, sociologist Harry Edwards called the current period “the most critical time in the history of college sports, at least since World War II.” Declaring the existence of a crisis, Edwards cited a confluence of violence, drug abuse and disregard for education.
Richard Ashby, a California law enforcement officer who specializes in gangs, cited a climate in which “respect” is accomplished only through fear and intimidation and that any “disrespect” must be answered. Ashby was part of a panel addressing cultural trends in college athletics.
While any solution to such a large problem must be multidimensional, former NBA star Bill Russell said it will have to begin in the classroom.
“We have a responsibility to educate these kids,” he said, “not just to read and write, but to educate them philosophically and even religiously. Our duty, the educators’, is to correct this culture because the nations with the best standard of living are the most educated places.”
Russell, an all-American at the University of San Francisco in the mid-1950s, said too many college athletics programs currently are failing young people in that regard.
“Student-athlete...What should that mean?” he inquired. “It should mean you play a sport and get an education at our expense. But what we’ve evolved into is a money-making machine. And to make money, you make compromises and the people you purport to protect become victims.”
Edwards also stressed the need to include more minority coaches in the system, not simply because it’s appropriate but because it is a “functional imperative.” He said he has seen cases where coaches are so out of touch that they don’t know their teams are “ganged up.” In one instance, he saw a coach attempting to recruit a “Crip” into a team filled with “Bloods.” Gang signals abounded, but Edwards said the coach was oblivious.
Along with that comes a flood of miscreant behavior, including disrespect for one another. “We can’t see athletics degenerate to the point that they’re dropping N-bombs on one another,” Edwards said. “We can’t ignore those things.”
Several panelists noted a new California law, Assembly Bill 2165, that recently was signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The new law requires student-athletes to disclose any felony activity before they are eligible to participate in intercollegiate athletics.
Research shows satisfaction
At another Association-wide session January 6, participants heard preliminary results from two major new NCAA studies that show, among other things, that student-athletes are at least as academically engaged as their non-athlete counterparts and that former student-athletes are highly positive about most aspects of their college experience.
The Growth, Opportunities, Aspirations and Learning of Students in College (GOALS) study was based on responses from 20,000 current student-athletes across the three membership divisions and most championships sports. It included questions about academic, athletics, social-health and respect issues.
The other study, Study of College Outcomes and Recent Experiences (SCORE), evaluated 8,000 responses from former student-athletes who graduated from high school in 1994. Questions in that survey pertained to how they regarded their college experience 10 years later and how their lives are progressing.
The GOALS report focused on two elements: academic engagement and time commitments for student-athletes.
Regarding academics, the report determined that 15 to 20 percent of the student-athletes surveyed said their choice of major was different than it might have been had they not been student-athletes (however, fewer than 5 percent of those said they regretted their decision). Most of the respondents, especially in Divisions I and II, felt their GPAs would have been higher had they not been athletes. But on various measures of academic engagement, student-athletes reported that they are as engaged or more engaged than non-athletes (as measured in the National Survey on Student Engagement).
Student-athlete responses to time-commitment questions indicated that they spend more time in academic pursuits than they did 20 years ago and that, in general, student-athletes spend more time on academic pursuits each weekday than on athletics, although baseball players stood out as devoting an imbalance of time to their sport. The examination also found that student-athletes devoted a surprisingly large amount of time to athletically related activities in the off-season.
The SCORE study was applied to former student-athletes who are by now about 29 years old. It determined that 88 percent of the respondents had earned their degrees (56 percent at the original school after five years, 6 percent at the original school after six years and 26 percent at another school). Ninety-four percent of the student-athletes who completed their bachelor’s degrees were positive about their overall education.
Integrating academics and athletics
Also on January 6, interested faculty from throughout the membership discussed what needs to be done to achieve more effective integration between academics and athletics on college campuses.
Claiming that “big-time sports has lost its moral compass,” University of Oregon faculty member Nathan Tublitz credited the Association as being an agent for change by strengthening academic-admission requirements, by strengthening academic-progress legislation and by penalizing poor academic performance.
He also lauded the report of the Presidential Task Force on the Future of Division I Intercollegiate Athletics but added that the “recommendations (contained in the report) must be turned into bylaws” before the document has any real value.
Bob Malekoff, former director of athletics at the College of Wooster and senior advisor for the College Sports Project, said that the enterprise is challenged by problems with youth sports, with a “keep-up-with-the-Joneses” spending mentality and (at least occasionally) with people in leadership positions who do not share the values of the institutions they represent.
He said that solutions should be based on the understanding that blanket approaches will not work, that the academic side must contribute to the resolution, that measurements must be developed to measure success and that coaches should be given a more balanced “scorecard” that rewards them based on factors other than the won-lost record.
Tublitz and others said that student-athletes should “feel comfortable as students” before they succeed academically. In that vein, he said that institutions should set up more effective mentoring programs for student-athletes, as they have done at Oregon.
“Athletics reform will not succeed until the NCAA and athletics officials partner with faculty,” he said.
Among the more intriguing sessions were two January 5 during which panelists discussing cultural issues in intercollegiate athletics said gang influences are harming young men by the thousands, and intercollegiate athletes are not immune from the danger.
The solution for college athletics, the panelists said, is likely a complicated one that involves more educational demands of young people, a willingness to provide well-reasoned second chances and a commitment to more professional opportunities for people of color.
In a panel about the influences of college sports, racial diversity, media, art and urban life, sociologist Harry Edwards called the current period “the most critical time in the history of college sports, at least since World War II.” Declaring the existence of a crisis, Edwards cited a confluence of violence, drug abuse and disregard for education.
Richard Ashby, a California law enforcement officer who specializes in gangs, cited a climate in which “respect” is accomplished only through fear and intimidation and that any “disrespect” must be answered. Ashby was part of a panel addressing cultural trends in college athletics.
While any solution to such a large problem must be multidimensional, former NBA star Bill Russell said it will have to begin in the classroom.
“We have a responsibility to educate these kids,” he said, “not just to read and write, but to educate them philosophically and even religiously. Our duty, the educators’, is to correct this culture because the nations with the best standard of living are the most educated places.”
Russell, an all-American at the University of San Francisco in the mid-1950s, said too many college athletics programs currently are failing young people in that regard.
“Student-athlete...What should that mean?” he inquired. “It should mean you play a sport and get an education at our expense. But what we’ve evolved into is a money-making machine. And to make money, you make compromises and the people you purport to protect become victims.”
Edwards also stressed the need to include more minority coaches in the system, not simply because it’s appropriate but because it is a “functional imperative.” He said he has seen cases where coaches are so out of touch that they don’t know their teams are “ganged up.” In one instance, he saw a coach attempting to recruit a “Crip” into a team filled with “Bloods.” Gang signals abounded, but Edwards said the coach was oblivious.
Along with that comes a flood of miscreant behavior, including disrespect for one another. “We can’t see athletics degenerate to the point that they’re dropping N-bombs on one another,” Edwards said. “We can’t ignore those things.”
Several panelists noted a new California law, Assembly Bill 2165, that recently was signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The new law requires student-athletes to disclose any felony activity before they are eligible to participate in intercollegiate athletics.
Research shows satisfaction
At another Association-wide session January 6, participants heard preliminary results from two major new NCAA studies that show, among other things, that student-athletes are at least as academically engaged as their non-athlete counterparts and that former student-athletes are highly positive about most aspects of their college experience.
The Growth, Opportunities, Aspirations and Learning of Students in College (GOALS) study was based on responses from 20,000 current student-athletes across the three membership divisions and most championships sports. It included questions about academic, athletics, social-health and respect issues.
The other study, Study of College Outcomes and Recent Experiences (SCORE), evaluated 8,000 responses from former student-athletes who graduated from high school in 1994. Questions in that survey pertained to how they regarded their college experience 10 years later and how their lives are progressing.
The GOALS report focused on two elements: academic engagement and time commitments for student-athletes.
Regarding academics, the report determined that 15 to 20 percent of the student-athletes surveyed said their choice of major was different than it might have been had they not been student-athletes (however, fewer than 5 percent of those said they regretted their decision). Most of the respondents, especially in Divisions I and II, felt their GPAs would have been higher had they not been athletes. But on various measures of academic engagement, student-athletes reported that they are as engaged or more engaged than non-athletes (as measured in the National Survey on Student Engagement).
Student-athlete responses to time-commitment questions indicated that they spend more time in academic pursuits than they did 20 years ago and that, in general, student-athletes spend more time on academic pursuits each weekday than on athletics, although baseball players stood out as devoting an imbalance of time to their sport. The examination also found that student-athletes devoted a surprisingly large amount of time to athletically related activities in the off-season.
The SCORE study was applied to former student-athletes who are by now about 29 years old. It determined that 88 percent of the respondents had earned their degrees (56 percent at the original school after five years, 6 percent at the original school after six years and 26 percent at another school). Ninety-four percent of the student-athletes who completed their bachelor’s degrees were positive about their overall education.
Integrating academics and athletics
Also on January 6, interested faculty from throughout the membership discussed what needs to be done to achieve more effective integration between academics and athletics on college campuses.
Claiming that “big-time sports has lost its moral compass,” University of Oregon faculty member Nathan Tublitz credited the Association as being an agent for change by strengthening academic-admission requirements, by strengthening academic-progress legislation and by penalizing poor academic performance.
He also lauded the report of the Presidential Task Force on the Future of Division I Intercollegiate Athletics but added that the “recommendations (contained in the report) must be turned into bylaws” before the document has any real value.
Bob Malekoff, former director of athletics at the College of Wooster and senior advisor for the College Sports Project, said that the enterprise is challenged by problems with youth sports, with a “keep-up-with-the-Joneses” spending mentality and (at least occasionally) with people in leadership positions who do not share the values of the institutions they represent.
He said that solutions should be based on the understanding that blanket approaches will not work, that the academic side must contribute to the resolution, that measurements must be developed to measure success and that coaches should be given a more balanced “scorecard” that rewards them based on factors other than the won-lost record.
Tublitz and others said that student-athletes should “feel comfortable as students” before they succeed academically. In that vein, he said that institutions should set up more effective mentoring programs for student-athletes, as they have done at Oregon.
“Athletics reform will not succeed until the NCAA and athletics officials partner with faculty,” he said.
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